


Calling you an Angel

by orphan_account



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Exorcism, M/M, likely AU, meme fill, s8 theorizing
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-03-04
Updated: 2013-03-04
Packaged: 2017-12-04 07:07:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/707956
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written based on a prompt on the SPN Kink Meme. </p><p>Castiel has been banished from Jimmy's body, possibly forever. Dean doesn't take it as well as he should, and things go south fast, leaving Jimmy to ride it out as best he can.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Calling you an Angel

**Author's Note:**

> Kind of stumped for a title, so I decided to fall back on They Might be Giants, who unfairly have a lot of songs I like that happen to do with angels.

Latin words, recently spoken, were still echoing in the room when he woke. He was exhausted. He'd slept far too long, his body felt alarmingly sore, his throat was dry and the pang of hunger was almost unbearable. There were myriad other sensations suddenly vivid and bright. After having them numbed away almost to nothing, every one was distracting now. Jimmy was awake: and the strange thing was, Castiel was silent. No, worse. Absent. For the first time in years, Jimmy Novak was apparently the sole resident behind his own eyes.  
  
He tried valiantly not to panic about it.  
  
No luck. His heart started pounding in his ears as he fought to focus, but calm seemed out of reach. Vague people-like figures stood before him; people who must surely be enemies, of him or at least of the Winchester brothers and Castiel. Else why was Jimmy alone again? He supposed they could be children playing at being witches, or weird faith-obsessed serial killers. He hoped they weren't serial killers. That didn't sound like it would end well for Jimmy.  
  
He was silently grateful that Castiel had at least healed his body after retaking it. The taste of his blood still felt uncomfortably familiar, the echo of the gunshot wound close and terrible as a coffin. Not that being hale and hearty did him any good. Whatever strength he was normally lent by Castiel's presence had gone with Castiel. He could make out at least two figures in front of him, one closer and one a few feet off, but he couldn't have done anything about them if he'd tried. Cultists, maybe. Curious vampires. His imagination tried to run with the possibilities, but there were heavier things on his mind.  
  
Adrenaline shot through him, bringing with it foreign memories. He'd missed so much! At first, they only seeped through in ones and twos, dull horrors for which Jimmy had been half aware. He remembered this, riding along passively, tacitly acknowledged by Castiel's occasional attempts to respect what few wishes Jimmy still had, until suddenly, in the house of a prophet, Castiel had shoved him down deep and choked him into unconsciousness. Even now Jimmy could feel the strain that had come of that moment, that he would regret knowing what followed, that Castiel had done him a great kindness that day. He stubbornly pushed himself to remember anyway.  
  
Jimmy had never contemplated what sort of death he favored, before. Then the dam burst, just as Jimmy and Castiel had, and suddenly he had all the frame of reference he could ever have needed. Any death that wasn't being smote, he thought; any death would have been better than that. It explained, at least, what Castiel had thought he was protecting Jimmy from. Without the dam to stem their tide, Jimmy drowned in the waves of apocalyptic horror that had followed, let himself sink into the despair of those moments rather than dwell on the fact that he had actually, totally, died. He was reluctant to count himself among the ranks of the few mortal persons on Earth who, at one time or another recently, had failed to stay dead. It seemed like tempting Fate.  
  
All this was happening, he knew, in seconds or less, his mind was still flowing past at the weird speed to which Castiel was accustomed. It was just about enough to crush a human psyche. Jimmy buckled under the pressure, slumping deeper into a chair, and tried to hold on by the skin of his teeth for the ride. Only faintly did this inform him that he was sitting, had been sitting since he awoke. He knew his eyes were open, but in the present he was still too shocked to see. Two figures at least. He had counted them before his brain starting locking up like this. They could be shapeshifters.  
  
Someone spoke, very near, in a mockingly familiar voice, almost as if he was reading Jimmy's thoughts. "Good morning, sunshine."  
  
He almost didn't hear, still caught up in the weird rush of senses returning after being suppressed for so long. Last time, Castiel had been ripped out of him so forcibly that the shock left Jimmy to pass out cold. This had happened twice while he still lay helpless in a pile of debris before the Winchester brothers had finally showed up. Depending on how you looked at it, they had luckily or not so much luckily reached him before demons or angels could return for or harm him, at least. But that had been last time; now he just felt nauseous. It wasn't such a strong sensation that he couldn't grit his teeth through it. Real life struck him as more pressing, though, and if there was information to gather about where Castiel had gone or been sent to, Jimmy wanted to be the one that gathered it. The stakes were too personal to risk ignoring. Still, he could not shake himself free of what he saw, though his head began pounding in painful time to his frantic heart.  
  
There were so many of them, icy, distant memories crashing through him, becoming his again. He moaned with despair when he saw the horrific dream of a future that would, gratefully, never happen-- where Castiel fell and worse, and Sam Winchester said yes, and Dean Winchester died-- and blinked through the unsettlingly familiar months that followed. Castiel had sunk deeper and deeper down into Jimmy's body, with the apocalypse coming to a head around them, meanwhile, until they had started to fuse together. Though he might have protested it, given the chance, Jimmy had been asleep and Castiel unaware Jimmy yet lived. In a desperate attempt to keep the flame of his own faith alive as his powers faltered and fled, Castiel had done his best to embrace humanity, reminded constantly how little he understood human society, and other basic things that he had never done before. The knowledge of their second death, no less painful than the first, shuddered down his spine, unwanted but necessary. Smiting was not more fun or less horrible to experience the second time. Jimmy decided that he objectively hated it.  
  
Whoever stood before him seemed to be turned away, now. The stranger went on to speak to someone else, asking his companion's opinion on the color of some ornament or another. Jimmy tried to catch his breath, head bowed, staring blankly into his lap. It was important to get his head back in the game, back to the present, but there was too much for him to take. Death by smiting: Lucifer's variation had involved more actual pain, and less rage, burning with cool, cold, rational energy. Rafael's had been quicker.  
  
Jimmy couldn't remember where they'd gone to while dead, only that they'd been pulled back almost instantly, remade, given back their breath of life. If Jimmy had been awake at the time, he would have questioned their unbelievably good fortune. Castiel hadn't, not enough. Shaking his head, Jimmy tried to clear it, and got his first real glimpse of the room. It was barren, dank and damp and poorly lit. He had a sinking feeling that he might be right about the serial killer possibility after all.  
  
The rest of the memories, the last of them, came in a quiet rush, like a log collapsing into embers as a fire burns too hot: Castiel, reborn, acting so very human and reaching higher than he could survive the fall. Castiel unwittingly dooming himself by ever touching Purgatory. Castiel dying inside of Jimmy's body at the hands of a hundred, a thousand hungry monsters, dying without voice to even a scream, dying not knowing if his friends would be smart enough to run--  
  
Then those unwanted passengers had eaten him, swallowed up all the little Castiel pieces until there was nothing left. Jimmy remembered how it felt, Castiel's self torn a thousand different ways, each tiny piece trembling, fluttering like a fragile bird in pain and terror, Voiceless, helpless. _Leviathan beats Angel_.  
  
Only Jimmy had been left to feel it when the Leviathans, too much for his frail body, had finally broken through, drilling out of him, out of skin and bone and dripping black bile where his blood should be.  
  
Because this memory was truly Jimmy's and not Castiel's, the current seemed to ebb for a moment. He seized on the opportunity to break his own daze, blinking rapidly to clear his vision. He was unhappy to realize his wrists were sore, bound by nylon with scratchy edges a little too tightly. This seemed to be what was keeping him in the chair. His legs were free, but that didn't do him much good. If he lashed out, he'd only be earning a blow to the head at best. Or a knife to skin him. Jimmy willed himself to calm down and be rational and stop frightening himself over the possibility that these were serial killers. It was unnerving that such a mundane horror was less terrifying to him than several alternatives.  
  
He was still reeling from the simple, unavoidable truth that they'd _died,_ in the interim. That last death-- the one he'd experienced alone-- reminded him strongly of this, of sitting here alone and vulnerable. Not a pleasant thought. Jimmy bit down on his tongue to keep calm, willing himself to believe that Castiel would find his way back in time, back where he belonged. After all, there were still a few shards of white and burning in Jimmy's consciousness that he thought must belong to Castiel, splinters left behind from their imperfect resurrections and their time together. Nothing useful was in those splinters, nothing sentient-- just an itch in the back of Jimmy's mind that told him Castiel had taken a tiny piece of Jimmy with him, too, because they'd been glued together with the industrial strength stuff until now.  
  
 _Where_ Castiel had gone was another story entirely. Now that he was finally focused, Jimmy got a good look at his audience and fought hard to stifle instinct to recoil on sight from the closer figure. Black eyes met him, and under those a somewhat familiar face. This had to be Crowley, the demon who'd taken the title as King of Hell, and as far as Jimmy could tell, Crowley was standing there, admiring a sapphire mounted on a brooch laid with white gold. It was incongruous in the extreme with the 'condemned building' look of the rest of the room.  
  
It seemed ironic to credit a demon for his presumably good fortune in being awake again, but the shoe seemed to fit. When he caught Jimmy's gaze, Crowley's apprehension melted into a self-satisfied, chipper smile. The man- the vessel- had a disarmingly canny look to his eyes. Of course, it would have to be a demon who was uncharacteristically smart that separated Jimmy out in the first place, wouldn't it? Jimmy's luck was awful that way, like a terrible pun. Castiel's was much the same. They'd been well-matched, Jimmy and Cas.  
  
Jimmy wrinkled his nose as he became ever more aware of the world around him, bombarded with the rust and dank oil smell of the place. He felt raw, as if he'd been struck by lightning, but at least Crowley appeared content to ignore Jimmy entirely, which gave Jimmy the opportunity to stare at the sapphire brooch and wonder if he'd ever seen a sapphire lit from within. He couldn't think of any such occasion. Crowley, party to none of Jimmy's thoughts, turned to his subordinate. The other demon's host looked like a young vet, and stood at military ease some steps behind, closely attentive.  
  
Jimmy ascertained that probably Crowley was to blame for Castiel's disappearance to where-ever, because he said to the other demon, "Well, then. I'll be back downstairs if you need anything else. For now, why don't you make sure our friend here can't call any other birds down from the attic, ey?"  
  
Crowley. Through several layers of sediment, there was hatred and frustration and grudging acceptance mixed up with Jimmy's own emotions, shadows of those Castiel had felt before. For his part, Jimmy found Crowley terrifying. Every memory of the man involved him slipping into deals with people who hadn't even realized they wanted something until Crowley started talking. Even Castiel had danced to Crowley's tune a few times, while he thought himself alone. It couldn't be good that Crowley was here now, clipping his new brooch to his collar and likely aware of exactly why it was that Castiel had gone missing in action. That seemed important to remember for later. If there was going to be a later. Everything of the immediate present reminded Jimmy of Reservoir Dogs in the worst way, and he didn't think he was likely to make it to the end of the movie, at this rate.  
  
He couldn't find it in him to speak at first, reeling and hoarse as if something scalding hot had burned through his throat recently. Before he could collect himself, Crowley was long gone, and the other demon was approaching. This one Jimmy did not recognize. He pulled up the sleeve on Jimmy's shirt wordlessly, pushing the coat and shirt both into place, bunched up around Jimmy's bicep, methodically. Once Jimmy's forearm was bare, the demon began wiping it down with rubbing alcohol, pinning Jimmy's elbow to the armrest with two fingers on his other hand. Even the biting stink of the rubbing alcohol wasn't enough to overpower the faint bleach smell of the building they were in, though it tingled oddly on Jimmy's skin.  
  
"What are you doing?" Jimmy asked numbly, knowing he shouldn't bother and not caring. His voice sounded halfway as gruff as Castiel's, though he couldn't pull normal speaking volume in the state he was in.  
  
The demon flicked its eyes up at him, saying nothing, and finished sterilizing Jimmy's forearm. With little other fanfare, it lifted a piece of equipment Jimmy thought he ought to recognize, but didn't, from a nearby tray of medical tools. It seemed to have a wire coming out of it, and there was a black cartridge loaded into it, but he didn't draw the connection until the needle pierced his skin. He'd never been interested in the art of body modification, certainly never gotten a tattoo before, and found himself surprised that the pain was not as bad as he would have expected. It was quicker, too, than he would have thought. Still agonizingly slow, but not as slow as it would have been if this was the method of torture.  
  
Instead, some kind of symbol was now shaping itself out on his forearm in black ink and, like embers, the slight glimmer of blood behind the skin.  
  
Between what had been said and what had to be true of his situation, Jimmy guessed very quickly what the demon was doing and panicked. Yes, it was no picnic being Castiel's host. No, he didn't want to give it up: not when it would mean Claire had to endure the same the instant that Castiel was able to return from where ever he'd been exorcised to.  
  
Furthermore, Jimmy had enough common sense to understand that the demon was going to torture him once he'd been angel-proofed, and he didn't want any part of it. He examined the demon's impassive expression for a few moments, trying to cobble together a plan, and eventually decided to wait.  
  
And when the lines were at a crucial point-- unfixable, if ruined, according to his partial retention of Castiel's memories-- he jerked with all his might at his arm, driving the needle deep into his skin and ruining the line. It hurt, it hurt as badly as he'd feared it might and it didn't stop the demon from being angry and having the upper hand.  
  
It did mean that Jimmy got to test out his memory on the latin Sam Winchester had once taught him, years ago, during the two days that they ever interacted. Sam had indulged Jimmy's curiosity with a gentle wince, and a good-natured reminder that Jimmy was not likely to have the time needed to complete an exorcism before he was gutted by a prospective demon. Jimmy had privately agreed, and in practice had simply fallen back on the salt and iron elements of what he remembered when demons inevitably attacked his family. Now he was grateful to remember the words, grateful that he remembered them well enough to say them fast because they immediately started to take hold of the demon, keeping it from advancing on him with those clutching hands that were out for his throat.  
  
He whispered the words, quickly and confidently, and was relieved to find that at least in this, he and Sam had been dead wrong. Sam Winchester and his brother, Jimmy had learned, were more often right than not. They were right about the kinds of things people tended to wish to be wrong about. This was more than survival, it was a personal victory.  
  
If he survived. If he escaped. If he could even tell Sam that the exorcism had worked. If they could find Castiel again.  
  
The chances seemed so infinitesimal as to not even be fairly considered chances, at the moment.  
  
Anger flared in the demon's eyes before they lost all trace of otherworldly blackness and became the eyes of a man, nothing more. Black smoke fled the host body, leaving it to crumple. It did. Jimmy watched it all with a horrified sort of fascination, surprised but pleased with himself. All right, not bad, he told himself. Still, what's step two?  
  
The now ex-host to the demon knelt before Jimmy, clutching his chest and heaving for a while. Jimmy waited, not being able to do much else, and wished for the bleeding of his arm to subside.  
  
Slowly, the man opened his eyes, looking up at Jimmy with teary eyes and a hopeless expression of confusion. His lips moved, but it took a few attempts before sound fell from them. "Are you-- are you an angel?" the man asked, seeming to need the reassurance desperately. Jimmy grimaced, and wriggled his fingers to draw the stranger's eyes to his manacles.  
  
"Not at the moment, but I'd like to fix that if I can. Come on, we need to get out of here." The man set to work at once on Jimmy's restraints, though his hands shook, and Jimmy added as an afterthought, "There's a mark we can draw on you to keep the demon out. It'd take too long to tattoo, but if you carve it--"  
  
Now, he had the man's undivided attention, fear now clashing with a desperate hope that said Jimmy was on the right track. "Please-- please show me, please. I don't want-- I can't have that thing come back into me."  
  
At the expressive shudder, Jimmy could only wince in sympathy. He'd felt similarly the first time Castiel had been dragged away, but eventually he'd grown to accept what he'd chosen. He was content not to have to know what it was like to be put through the same experience without the option to choose. So he said, more gently, "Of course I'll show you. But we have to get out of here in a hurry. We're not safe here." Especially, Jimmy thought, not me. He needn't have worried; his unexpected partner in crime was very motivated and resourceful to boot, and in no time at all he and Jimmy were fleeing the warehouse, creeping along in silence. They paused once they'd made it outside the building, just long enough in the shade of another building for Jimmy to carve the devil's trap mark into the other man's skin.  
  
"I'm Jimmy, by the way," he said, offering his other hand for his unwitting patient to grip as he made a quick bandage to put over the wound. The grip that met his was firm, reassuringly steady.  
  
"Kadir." Kadir's face was ashen, but the color started to return to his cheeks as they began to run again. They didn't speak much; Jimmy found in his trench coat a cell phone with several missed calls and a voicemail box that had been filled. Kadir asked for Jimmy's help finding a car that Kadir had abandoned after possession, evidently drawn to a higher calling. They stayed together as far as a diner, where Kadir said he must go home to his family and Jimmy said he understood.  
  
There, he listened to thirty five voicemails, each increasingly concerned, all terse and clipped, from Dean Winchester for Castiel.  
  
Nervous, he debated the best course of action; he ate a meal and nursed a glass of water, glad that Kadir had at least left Jimmy with enough money to pay for busfare. He thought of the oil-smelling warehouse, the blue gem, and the demon Crowley.  
  
He called Amelia.  
  
The phone rang to a message machine, and he did not leave a message.  
  
He tried her cell, and a familiar voice answered at once, blistering him with hope and the sudden, irrevocable knowledge that this was not the number he needed to call.  
  
"Dad?"  
  
Eyes stinging, Jimmy dragged his lower lip into his mouth, forcing himself to smile as he ducked his head lest anyone else in the diner happen to look up and see him. "Claire," he whispered, through a throat too tight for anything better. "Hi, baby."  
  
Claire's voice trembled on the other line. She promised him she would find her mother, and that she loved him. She asked if he was coming home, asked, "Are you ever coming home?"  
  
Jimmy said, "No, baby, I don't think I can." His chest hurt. His shoulders shook.  
  
Over the phone he'd heard Claire's sneakered footsteps striking the ground, her sudden gasping gait as she ran for everything she was worth. The slam of her footsteps died away completely now, and slowly her breath evened out. When she spoke again, it was a choked, pitiful sob, and he bit down harder on his lip not to echo her. " _Why not?_ "  
  
He tried to breathe. It was strange to feel again, to feel something so direct and tangible as this, and Jimmy couldn't speak through it for a moment.  
  
"Is it because of me?" Claire's voice was small and fearful, and he wondered not for the first time how much she remembered of her time spent subsumed by Castiel. Many times they had argued in the back of Jimmy's mind, but Castiel had always insisted that Claire had given her consent before he dropped into her so-small body.  
  
"It's-- it's because it's not safe," he said at last, which was true, and Jimmy laughed once, breathless. "Not for you or for mom."  
  
Claire said, hopefully, "Well, when will it be?"  
  
and Jimmy didn't answer. He took a deep breath, held it for a long moment as he savored the knowledge that this, this was an unexpected new opportunity in lieu of the last time he'd ever gotten to talk to his daughter. "Sweetheart, I love you more than anything. And I love your mother, too." His voice betrayed him, shattered off into a pathetic little whimper, and Jimmy bit his tongue to help himself refocus. "And-- it'll never be safe, so I can't come back. I just-- I just wanted to say goodbye properly this time. I love you, sweetie."  
  
She didn't argue. She cried, softly, and said, "I love you too, Dad."  
  
Half an hour later, Jimmy called Dean Winchester and said very quickly, "Dean, this isn't Cas, it's Jimmy. I need help."  
  
He felt nervous, asking for favors, knowing what Castiel and Dean had felt for each other as the years began to blur by. He expected some resistance, anger at least; but beyond the basics of the story, Dean didn't ask for much else. He told Jimmy where to meet him, and they hung up.  
  
Jimmy walked out of the restaurant and all the way to the GreyHound station, and hopped on the next bus out as soon as he had the chance.


End file.
